Are 2MB SRAM PCMCIA Mem Upgrades woth the $$?

[alexh]

it's OK for the 600 but it'll occupy the single slot that might also be useful for e.g. a NIC.

A NIC on a 2Mbyte A600? Hardly useful.

[Zac67]

A NIC on a 2Mbyte A600? Hardly useful.

True - forgot about the limitations of such a small machine. Once you do add one of the rare accelerator boards you need to get rid of the SRAM card anyway.

[desiv]

A NIC on a 2Mbyte A600? Hardly useful.

For you possibly... :griping:  

I seem to remember we thought localtalk was great, and it was only  230.4 kbit/s.

Or are you thinking the only thing you can do with a network is browse the web?  :roflmao:

Personally, I prefer network file transfers to PCMCIA based, even if they are slower...  But that's just me..

desiv

[Effy]

Okay, and now a question about possible problems one can counter when using a 2nd hand pcmcia ram card. I have here two 4 Mb cards, one with no brand which Prepcard does not recognize, the other is recognized as a Sundisk with several other parameters but when I click on 'use it as Ram' or 'use it as disk' then I get the error which sounds a bit like 'error while writing to disk' ... I did do a quick search for a possible write protect switch but couldn't find any, so I did a close search but couldn't find any either ... any bright ideas
The first one also tend to get hot so in a way I think it may be toast ...

[AmiDude]

Okay, and now a question about possible problems one can counter when using a 2nd hand pcmcia ram card. I have here two 4 Mb cards, one with no brand which Prepcard does not recognize, the other is recognized as a Sundisk with several other parameters but when I click on 'use it as Ram' or 'use it as disk' then I get the error which sounds a bit like 'error while writing to disk' ... I did do a quick search for a possible write protect switch but couldn't find any, so I did a close search but couldn't find any either ... any bright ideas
The first one also tend to get hot so in a way I think it may be toast ...

Are they real SRAM cards? If so, you don't need the PrepCard program.
PCMCIA SRAM cards configure themselves.

[tone007]

I got one of these 2MB SRAM cards for my 600 project for $25 once, I thought it was worth that much. Now if I could just remember where I left it...

[Effy]

Adding this : when I try to use the first 4 Mb card as a Disk or Ram then the computer freezes and only a reset will bring the workbench back ... so I guess that one may be useless ...

[Karlos]

A NIC on a 2Mbyte A600? Hardly useful.

Come on, that's unfair, unless your 2MB A600 has no hard drive. Otherwise, a NIC is immeasurably more useful than a floppy disk drive when you want to transfer files between machines.

[RetroAmigaMan]

The A608 will be a great upgrade when they're finally available, but it could be quite some time before a second batch of them are made, and the first batch (which are already preordered/taken) is only just going into production now.

A 2MB SRAM card will in fact speed up your A600 very slightly, although it will slow an A1200 down. Here are some SysInfo results from a test I did:

A600 (2MB Chip, No FastRAM)
526 Dhrystones
0.54 MIPS

A600 (2MB Chip, 2MB PCMCIA SRAM)
699 Dhrystones
0.72 MIPS

Upgrading my A600 to a total of 4MB RAM has allowed me to play hundreds of WHDLoad games which wouldn't work before, as well as giving me more memory to work with when I have multiple applications running. I think they are definitely worth getting if you have an A600 and you don't want to wait possibly another year for a chance to grab an A608. But $100 is a lot! How about $39.98? That softens the blow a little doesn't it? You can buy them from Memory Ten, it's where I got mine from.

http://www.memoryx.net/bgz.html

I just hope nobody goes and buys them all up to resell, this is the cheapest place I've found in the world to get them and I think all A600 owners should have the chance to get one at a good price.

Hi Cammy, guys

I've had a look around http://www.memoryx.net/bgz.html but I'm having trouble finding the 4Mb SRAM PCMCIA memory you mentioned - are they sold out?

I've just arrived back from the UK (still jetlagged), with an A600 I snagged there (and assorted UK 8bit machines) that I've added a CF drive to.  I have 2Mb chip RAM, but that's about it, so I'm having issues getting games to run outside the CLI.  I've had an A1000 for almost 20 years, but it's gone back into the cupboard as I can't get a hold of any flash hard drives for it.  I'm really disappointed at this - I can readily get flash HDs for my 8bit BBC machine.  Developers seem to be a bit thin on the ground in the Amiga scene, whereas retrofit kits seem to be in abundance on eBay for the Acorn BBC (RetroClinic in particular are amazing - adding IDE and USB interfaces to a 1982-era machine).

Any idea where can find suitable SRAM modules for my A600?

Thanks

Steve

[amiga1260]

I bought a while ago an A608 Version 2007 from E-bay. I had some trouble to get it working on my A600 rev 1.5 board. I told the seller that it doesn't work and bought another one. The seller is Spock-79 and you can order it from A1k.org. It is a German site. You can still order it. This version can't be set with a jumper. You need to program the CLPD chip to use 8 or 4 MB.

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=22064


The second one pressed to hard on it and broke the connector. I let it repaired by a friend and now it works on my old board.

Meanwhile I bought two A600 boards. One died after few hours and the second one a bought it from a German Amiga store Vesalia. The last one still works.

Now I have two A600's with A608's with 4MB fastmem, A603's and 4GB CF HD.

[Cammy]

Shortly after I posted the link to the 2MB PCMCIA SRAM cards they were all sold out. I have a feeling someone bought up the remaining stock intending to sell them back to the Amiga community for a profit. Ever since, no one I have seen on any forums has posted anywhere else to buy them at a decent price.

[Crom00]

I have a feeling someone bought up the remaining stock intending to sell them back to the Amiga community for a profit.

Yep par for the course and that's why I keep my links quiet. I also don't buy out stock to resell on ebay.

[easy_john]

A NIC on a 2Mbyte A600? Hardly useful.

Nic in A600 with 4 mb fast is very useful.
My a600 and aweb browser - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5r7om_VSNc

[RetroAmigaMan]

Aw that's pretty poor behaviour, buying up all stock.  BY the way, would a 6Mb CF card work?  I wouldn't care if the remaining 2Mb was locked off after the 4Mb limit, as long as the thing worked.

Thanks guys.

:elvis:

[brownb2]

Aw that's pretty poor behaviour, buying up all stock.  BY the way, would a 6Mb CF card work?  I wouldn't care if the remaining 2Mb was locked off after the 4Mb limit, as long as the thing worked.

Thanks guys.

:elvis:

It doesn't work like that.

Don't know about sizes of SRAM larger than 4MB either, and I'd also watch out for Melcards like  this Melcard 8MB card which probably WOULDN'T work (note it doesn't say SRAM... just linear in the ad and EEPROM on the card - true SRAM cards usually have SRAM written on them and don't mention "Flash" )

FWIW I've just bought a 4MB PSRAM card in the UK that I needed a second mortgage for. It's improved the performance on my A600 from 0.55 MIPS to 0.72 MIPS.

[RetroAmigaMan]

Thanks for the advice, guys.  I've just bought a 2Mb SRAM card.  Wasn't cheap, but will be worth it when I get it.  After all, two weeks ago I carried my A600 (plus p/s) in a backpack all the way from the UK.  Had to take it out for security heaps of times on the way home.  Got some curious looks.

Especially as I also had a Spectrum+ and an Acorn Electron.  Do love my 8bit Acorns -I've got a BBC B, a BBC+64K, a BBC Master and a Master Compact (plus spare chips, parts etc), and 2 Acorn Electrons.  All working.